Urine| Hair Follicle | Oral Fluid | Blood | ETG
Hair testing is increasingly perceived as a crucial method for identifying drug and alcohol consumption. Hair captures a detailed timeline of alcohol and drug usage by holding biomarkers within the fibers of the hair as it grows. When strands are taken near the scalp, they can reveal up to a roughly 3-month period of drug and alcohol presence. Hair samples are easy to gather, tough to tamper with, and hassle-free to transport.
A hair sample measuring 1.5 inches and consisting of around 200 strands (approximately the thickness of a #2 pencil) nearest to the scalp yields 100mg of hair, which is the perfect sample size for both testing and verification. For EtG, additional tests, or evaluations exceeding 10 panels, 150mg of hair is advised. It's suggested to weigh the hair using a jeweler's scale. If scalp hair can't be obtained, an equal quantity of body hair can be used. Any mention of head hair relates only to scalp hair. Body hair includes all other hair forms (e.g., facial or axillary hair).
Process Overview
The key steps in the lab processing of a drug test outcome include Accessioning, Screening, Extraction, and Confirmation.
Accessioning entails the initial handling of a sample in the lab's system. This procedure ensures the sample was adequately sealed and shipped, allocates a randomly generated LAN (Laboratory Accessioning Number), and completes any further data input not included in an electronic chain of custody process.
Screening serves as a preliminary rapid assessment for substance misuse. Though Screening is a budget-friendly method to exclude drug usage for many samples, confirmation of a positive screen is essential for it to be legally viable. Any samples that register a potential positive during Screening require subsequent confirmation.
When a sample appears likely positive at the Screening stage, additional hair is extracted from the primary sample for the Extraction phase. Here, drug particles are drawn out from hair at much lower concentrations compared to other techniques (such as urine or oral fluid), making hair drug testing the most complex method to undertake.
Confirmation of any positive findings from the screening is performed using GC/MS, GC/MS/MS, or LC/MS/MS. All preliminarily positive samples undergo washing prior to confirmation as necessary. The full lab process from Accessioning to Confirmation is evaluated according to both the CAP (College of American Pathologists) Hair code and accredited to ISO / IEC 17025 criteria.
Advantages of hair drug testing:
Limitations:
Note: Although sometimes called "hair follicle tests", the assessment examines the hair strand and not the follicle beneath the scalp.
Hair follicle testing in Butte, AK, surpasses traditional urine tests in multiple aspects.
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